


Belong

by L_awlietxoxx



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Lives, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Reylo, F/M, Fix-It, Make that very anxious, Meanwhile Ben is understanding gentle and tall, Of course there's a smattering of angst, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-TROS domesticity, Pregnant Rey (Star Wars), Rey is an anxious mother to be, Skywalker Twins, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, This is the Reylo fluff and happy ending I needed, because I couldn't help it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:09:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22124620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_awlietxoxx/pseuds/L_awlietxoxx
Summary: At their home on Naboo, Rey is pregnant with twins.Sometimes, it's difficult. Most of the time, it's not.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 89
Kudos: 709
Collections: The Rise of Skywalker: Fix-It Fic Edition





	Belong

**Author's Note:**

> My heart craved this. I hope it helps heal a few more hearts out there as well. <3
> 
> Mood board by [monsterleadmehome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterleadmehome)

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/181686886@N04/49331406131/in/dateposted/)

“ _Kriff!_ ”

Rey swears in a forceful rush as the herbs she spent the last hour gathering tip out from her basket to scatter amongst the grass. With her wide, round belly weighing her down, she’d only been able to manage a clumsy dodge when a bird zipped past her head, upending her basket and undoing all her hard work.

She just stands there frowning at the ground for a long moment, ruminating on just how difficult even these tedious tasks have become since her body started expanding.

With slow, arduous effort, Rey kneels in the midst of the mess. She winces as she shifts, seeking a position that places no pressure on her belly. It’s practically as big as the rest of her, and with only weeks until the twins’ expected arrival, Rey’s discomfort and sore muscles seem to worsen each day.

Before she reaches to gather up her bundle again, Rey indulges in a moment of self-pity. 

She thought she was stronger than this. When she first sensed the sparks of life within her, she expected that through her Jedi training, she would easily be able to endure the physical burden of childbearing. She expected, through meditation, to be able to shrink and expel any pain or discomfort, replacing it with only peace.

But Rey hasn’t been able to engage in any physical training whatsoever over the last two months. Every day her connection to the Force and her control over her own mind and body seem to grow more distant.

She can no longer close her eyes and let go of the persistent ache between her shoulder blades. She can no longer contain a wince when one of the babies shifts within her and it feels as if her insides will be forced out. She can no longer meditate, with two young Force-sensitive minds aware within her who instinctively reach into her meditation space. 

Unable to tap into the Force to will her discomfort away, Rey had discovered as a last resort a particular herb local to Naboo which brewed into a soothing tea. After finding the supply depleted this morning, Rey had made her slow, cumbersome way outside with no small amount of grumbling. With Ben gone since dawn to hunt for the tender game Rey craved, she’d had no choice but to go on her own if she wanted relief.

How she misses hunting. Misses running. Misses the exhilaration of exertion and the balm of sweat. Her body feels foreign and inept as she slowly reaches across the grass, rifling through the outcropping to gather up the herbs again and deposit them painstakingly in her basket. 

The going is slow, but even frustrated as she is, Rey does not rush. Doing anything in a hurry has become completely out of the question. And so the sun has shifted a bit in the sky by the time she hears Ben’s voice calling her name. The first time he sounds inquisitive, wondering. By the fourth time, anxious. 

Rather than muster the effort of calling to him, Rey closes her eyes and assures him through their bond, “I’m here.”

She senses his immediate easing, then his growing proximity as he follows the glowing bond to where she sits. His head crests the small hill first, ridiculously tall amidst the swaying sea of green. He’s dressed in loose-fitting black garments so similar to what he wore that day – when he charged to her side amidst Palpatine’s encroaching darkness and with a single shared look of determination and devotion, banished every last drop of violence and rage that ever lived within her. 

The day he’d freed her from the shadow of Palpatine’s grip, given his very life for hers, then died in her arms with her kiss upon his lips and a smile of long-dreamt fulfillment. The day Rey had rained tears upon his still, smiling face until she felt Leia’s presence in the dark castle with them. Until a light came to him, so gentle and pure it could have been borne of nothing but a mother’s love. A familiar voice had whispered, “Live and be loved, my son,” and a moment later Ben breathed the first gasp of his second life. Rey had hurried to taste the sweetness of his second breath, and as many after that as she possibly could. 

Nearly a year ago now, and yet the memories haven’t dimmed. Still, they rush through Rey’s entire being each and every time she lays eyes on him and the miraculous truth of his existence. 

Ben lopes towards her with the cleanly killed shapes of several small animals bound over his shoulder. When he finds her, his brow lifts at the same time his mouth turns down. In one motion, he kneels at her side and circles her shoulders with an arm. 

For half an instant, Rey begrudges his ease of movement. Then his warm arm settles around her fully and he dips close to nuzzle a kiss into her hair. The half instant fled, Rey leans into him with a grateful sigh as he breathes gentle warmth against her.

“What are you doing out here? I didn’t expect to find you gone.” His voice is only barely chiding – mostly a deep, rumbling comfort. 

Rey gives a slight wave of the herbs clutched in her hand. “Out of tea.”

The wide expanse of Ben’s hand rubs along her shoulder. “I would have gathered them for you when I got back.”

Rey gives a shrug of her shoulders she knows borders petulant, even as she leans in closer against his chest. “Didn’t know when you’d be back.”

Ben’s hand slides from her shoulder down her arm. When it reaches her hand, he gently takes the herbs and drops them into Rey’s mostly still-empty basket. 

“Do I ever leave you for long?”

He lets go of her to shift up onto his knees, reaching for the scattered herbs and collecting them quickly. Rey’s basket is already full again when she murmurs, eyes never leaving him, “No. No, you don’t.”

Even when he’d seemed gone from her forever. Even when the World Between Worlds separated them and Rey was lost for a deep, tumbling moment, terrified that she would never be able to forgive him. Even then, he’d come back to her before everything had broken apart. Since then, he’d never been gone long enough for even a single piece to fall out of place. 

Ben reaches back and catches one of the cords keeping his kills bound to his shoulder. With a few twists and a knot, he fastens the basket against his back. That way, his hands are free to hold his wife. 

“Come here.”

Ben doesn’t so much as grunt as he kneels, gathers the very pregnant Rey securely in his arms, and stands again. 

“It’s not fair,” Rey grumbles, half heartedly and with more affection than complaint. Her voice is almost lost in Ben’s neck as her arms fit automatically and perfectly against his shoulders. Ben carrying her has become practically a daily occurrence at this point – one that never fails to calm every anxious, aching inch of her with the irrefutable assurance of safety. 

“What’s not fair?” Ben asks, voice rumbling out against Rey’s body. Rey rests her cheek upon his shoulder as he makes for home. 

“Seems like you’re stronger every day to keep carrying me like this. Meanwhile, I can’t even gather herbs on my own.”

Ben chuckles, and Rey moves a hand against his chest to feel it. 

“Rey. You’re carrying two entire people inside you. Every day, you’re sheltering and feeding and helping them grow. Our children. I’d better be able to keep carrying you. Otherwise, what use would I be?”

Rey’s smile comes easily as she closes her eyes, head against Ben’s shoulder as the motion of his steady steps lulls her. 

“As I recall, you’re good for a thing or two when it came to the twins.”

“Mm. Coming for the twins. That’s about it.”

Rey’s giggle bubbles up from a sunny place inside her where the strain on her body had cast shadow. The weather turns so quickly. 

“Two babies because you always make me come at least twice. Makes sense.”

“Two is the minimum, of course.”

“Of course.”

Silence until their house comes into view – an Amidala inheritance Ben received upon the reclaiming of his true name and the passing of his mother. 

The modestly sized house stands in the middle of a lush, secluded clearing. Surrounded by the kind of bright green landscape Rey could only dream of and far away from prying eyes, it was the perfect home for them.

As they near home, Ben shifts her just a little higher and closer in his arms – one beneath her knees and the other below her back, just like the first time they ever met. 

He whispers a version of the same question he asks her every day, hesitant and almost apologetic. “How does it feel today?”

Ten minutes ago, alone, Rey’s complaints would have paraded themselves the whole way home. Now, in Ben’s arms, she smooths one hand along the globe of her belly and says simply, “Heavy, but okay now.”

She looks up at him. “I think the boy takes after you. So much bigger than his sister.”

“You can tell it’s the boy who’s bigger?”

Rey nods, her touch more fond now as she traces the size and shape of their children. “Oh yes. I know it’s him. He’s always moving, always reaching out further and further every day.”

Ben had actually been the one to first recognize both of their children’s distinct Force signatures. In bed one night with Rey spooned back against his chest, he’d been smoothing a hand across Rey’s still-flat stomach when his hand suddenly stopped. Rey felt him go very still behind her, and tipped her head backwards. 

“Do you feel him? Our boy?” Rey murmured. 

With no small amount of wonder in his voice, Ben whispered in a hush, “Her.”

“Hm?”

Rey moved a hand to cover Ben’s on her stomach, searching the Force to feel what he did. 

“Him.” Ben laced his fingers between Rey’s and shifted their hands to the left on her stomach. Beneath their joined hands, Rey felt the steady warmth of a tiny, budding presence in the Force. Then, Ben had shifted their hands slightly up and towards the right. “Her.”

At first Rey didn’t understand. Then she felt it – a pulse of light and pure energy, reaching the short distance it could until it found its parents’ hands and held on. 

Rey gasped, stunned that her own body could hold something so wondrous in secret. Then Ben began laying kisses along her shoulder, and Rey began to cry a little as the tiny bud that was their daughter continued clinging to any part of Rey she could reach. 

“I feel them,” Ben murmured, curling more tightly around Rey so his lips could brush the wetness upon her cheeks. “Our little ones. Our twins.”

Since then, Rey became the one more closely attuned to the twins as they grew. The more distinct their Force signatures became, the clearer Rey could sense each small movement and feeling the babies exuded. But not for the first time, Rey wondered and worried how much of the birthing Ben would share when it came time for the twins to enter the world. Through their bond, he sometimes felt pangs of her pains. Sometimes he woke in the mornings and shared her sickness. For his sake, Rey hoped she would be able to withhold as much of the pain as possible. Men weren’t made to bear such things. 

The mid-day sun breaks through the clouds. Rey doesn’t notice, but Ben does. In his eyes, the beams fall directly upon Rey. 

“You look so very beautiful.”

Rey blanches as she always does whenever Ben calls her such things. Which is to say, nearly every day. Still, Rey doesn’t think she’ll ever grow accustomed. She never even owned a mirror for most of her young life. To try thinking of herself as something that might attract attraction – like a functioning, glimmering bit of wreckage in the depths of a ship – much less something even worth spending time looking at… it will never come easy. 

She ducks her head, murmurs, “Don’t feel it.”

“Well. It’s a good thing then that I feel it enough for both of us.”

Rey can’t help a snicker. “You feel beautiful enough for us both, Ben?”

“I mean I know your beauty well enough for the both of us.”

“Oh.” A beat as Ben passes in through the front door. “Guess that’s a good thing then, since you’ll have to look at my face for a pretty long time still.”

“A very long time, I should hope.”

Ben carries Rey straight through the small house to their bedroom. He carefully sets her down, helps her adjust the blankets, then bends to leave a kiss on the top of her head. 

“I’ll leave these in the kitchen to prepare tonight,” Ben says as he shrugs off the game strapped to his back. “And I’ll bring you some of the tea right away.”

Rey can do nothing but smile up sleepily from her nest of blankets. She hardly exerted herself in comparison to everything Ben did today, and yet Rey feels completely drained. Frustrated as she is, she can’t help it.

Rey watches Ben turn to leave the room, and it happens like it sometimes does. She sees him not quite head-on, or from a distance, or when his attention is elsewhere. And for a moment, she is pulled back into a place and time when they were on opposite sides. When she had to strangle back the tenderness that rose in her, impossibly fast and undefeatable, whenever she saw his eyes. When she had to deny him, deny herself, and it felt like suffocating.

“Ben?”

His name is out of her mouth before she can help it – the single syllable seeking and high-pitched. 

In the doorway, he stops immediately and turns back to her. 

There may be some small vestige of Kylo Ren in the way his head turns, in the bearing of his shoulders. But his eyes – they are of a shining constellation Kylo Ren’s darkness never knew. 

He is hers. Her Ben. The same man she has always known, the same that she has fought and battled across from; and yet an entirely new man of his own creation, just for her. 

She wishes, how she wishes she had never wounded him. The slicing scar down his face may have been healed, but she’d never been able to do the same for the thick patch of scar tissue covering the hole she once left in his torso. She is still stunned by how genuinely indifferent Ben seems to its presence. He’ll brush her hand away whenever she touches it, bringing her fingers to his lips instead and murmuring something like, “We’re together now.”

And in these moments, Rey’s heart nearly breaks as she glimpses understanding of how Kylo Ren came to be. How Ben Solo must have been a boy so generous, so completely compassionate and selfless, that he was willing to erase his very sense of self should the day come when he thought he had become a monstrous burden to those he once loved. The hurt, the betrayal that boy must have felt, when he realized his sacrifices were in vain. All he lost trying to cling to the light that misunderstood him, then trying to appease the dark that always, always demanded more. 

Rey takes a moment swallowing around all of it. When she finds her voice, it is so very soft. 

“You know, I’m always going to protect you.”

Ben blinks a few times, taken aback. Then he watches the steadiness in Rey’s face and understands a bit. He knows the feeling so perfectly well himself, after all.

Quickly, Rey amends from across the room, “I’ll be better at it when I’m not triple my usual size, but…”

She gives him a grin, which he quickly returns with a small laugh. 

“I know,” he says with a nod. “Just like I know I’ll always have a place with you. That’s my protection.”

  


* * *

  


Their little girl began crying hours ago and won’t seem to stop. Ben left early that morning to take the speeder into town for supplies, and Rey remains helpless in bed. She strokes her belly, hushes the tiny girl, but still her distress radiates out in the Force, filling the room with silent cries Rey somehow feels tearing at her heart. 

Then the boy rolls inside her, as if waking up, and suddenly his Force signature bursts open with echoing cries. Desperate, Rey attempts to center and calm herself enough to reach the children through the Force and offer primal, wordless comfort. But their unhappiness is too loud, too overwhelming, and Rey cannot seem to find herself in the Force. Soon, her own tears begin joining that of the children.

Ben senses Rey’s tears the moment he steps over the threshold. He drops the satchels of supplies at his feet and rushes to the bedroom. Rey lays on her side in bed, arms curled gently around her massive belly as she cries silent, slow tears. She looks up immediately as he enters and sobs gratefully.

“What is it?” he asks in a rush, then realizes the second he approaches the bed. In the Force, his children are wailing. His breath chokes like a solid thing in his throat, his pulse immediately racing in panic. Rey clutches his hand.

“ I-I can’t reach them. Inside me, they’re too loud and I can’t find them...”

Rey hiccups as she speaks, tears rolling down her face. Ben takes a deep breath, letting the shock of his wife and children’s distress flow through and then center him, just as he would harness fear or adrenaline in a battle. 

Ben squeezes Rey’s hand tightly before assuring her, “You did fine. It’s going to be fine.”

Ben lets go of her hand and gently helps her up in bed, bringing her to sit at the edge. Then he kneels before her, his hands spread atop her round belly and his head bent close.

Ben closes his eyes, fighting through the buffeting waves of the twins’ silent wails until he can sense the children themselves, beneath all the chaotic energy. Finally, they come into sight. The boy is twisting and turning inside Rey, while the girl is curled up tight, tiny fists balled in front of her face. Ben moves his hands in slow, soothing circles against them.

“It’s alright, little ones,” he says, gentle but clear. “It’s alright. You’re safe. Mama and I are here. Everything’s alright.”

Along with the sound of his voice, Ben reaches out to them through the Force. In his mind, he echoes the same sentiments, sending them again and again in soft assurances until the cries gradually begin to ease. Slowly, their Force signatures begin to calm.

“Everything’s alright,” he whispers again to Rey’s belly. As the echoes of the twins’ cries peter out, Rey lets out a wet, thankful noise of relief. She reaches for Ben, hands sinking into his hair and petting clumsily, then gently holding him there near her tummy.

Ben lays a soft kiss through the fabric of Rey’s loose shirt, directing the comfort and love of the gesture into the Force for the twins to sense. Two more kisses, and then the room has finally calmed enough for Rey to join with Ben’s presence in the Force. Rey closes her eyes, focuses on Ben’s lips still brushing kisses along her belly, and then she can finally reach them. Their babies. 

The girl releases a little giggle at Ben’s next kiss, while the boy coos at his father’s presence. Rey follows Ben’s example, sending comfort for the twins to sense. Both babies immediately reciprocate with flares of affection, the girl flailing a little bit at her mother’s presence.

Rey hears Ben laugh against her belly, and she comes back to herself. Ben’s eyes are bright and crinkled at the corners as he smiles up at her. Still kneeling before her, he presses one more kiss to the shape of her for good measure.

“I think we just met our babies for the first time,” he says as he moves up to join her in their bed. Rey immediately folds herself into his arms, burrowing close. She smiles into his shoulder as he kisses her hair.

“They’re beautiful, Rey. You’ve made such beautiful children.”

“You were so good with them. I-I panicked but you knew just how to reach them.”

“I panicked too. I didn’t know what I was doing... I’m just glad it worked.”

Ben wraps her up close, speechless for a moment with this new understanding of the tiny, magnificent lives growing inside Rey even now. Nothing before in his life ever felt as monumentous and awe-inspiring as this.

“It’s wonderful today, Ben,” Rey murmurs against his chest, her voice soft and floating. “You don’t have to ask. It’s wonderful.”

  


* * *

  


The very first time Ben slid inside of her, Rey’s world stopped making sense. There were no words for it, no concept to understand what she felt. How Rey’s world came apart at the seams and burst into a new spectrum of color as Ben’s body cradled hers, and inside she became something so much greater and expansive than she’d ever known.

She’d heard it could hurt the first time. Although she had no words for how it felt to lose herself in Ben’s eyes while she shook and trembled open around him, there was nothing in that hurricane of glory, completion, and elation that could ever qualify as pain.

“Is it alright?” Ben gasped directly into her mind, making Rey shake and moan all the more to feel him in her mind while her body was already filled by him so completely. In instinct to have him _deeperdeepereverywhere_ , Rey’s legs hitched up high against Ben’s sides and wrapped tight. Ben groaned as her movement ground him deeper inside her.

Rey arched closer to him, gasping for breath and sense through the overwhelming sensation as places inside her she never knew existed exploded to life.

“It… It’s glorious. Ben. Please, p-please...I’ve never felt...”

Ben bent his head against her neck, making soothing sounds into her skin as he angled himself on his elbows and edged into her a little deeper. Rey made a noise loud and fervent. Desperate for more of her, for all of her, as if this might be the only chance he’ll ever have, he rocked his hips back, gripped Rey tight in his arms, and began making love to her in furious, desperate bursts.

She undid him. She always had - but this was beyond anything he’d ever known. Ben had only ever done this a few times, a long time ago, but with Rey the experience was something new entirely. Beneath him and all around him, Rey trembled like something fragile and so very unspeakably precious. But her voice - the noises she made, unrestrained and powerful and commanding, were impossible not to obey. 

And so Ben surged into her again and again, claiming and consuming like the ocean along her shore. He held her closer as he angled deeper and reached a place that set her off, crying out in high-pitched noises somewhere near his name as she seized up around him.

“You’re so... so beautiful. More than I’ll ever deserve. Rey. You’ve saved me and I love you so... Love you more than I can say.”

Every single muscle in Rey’s body contracted, fighting to keep Ben one with her forever as she crested in pleasure so exquisite, it hardly seemed of this world. 

Ben’s voice whispered again into her mind, “I love you, Rey.” And the emotions that filled Rey from head to toe were irreconcilable with that of a young scavenger who once thought the world was empty and herself alone, adrift.

“I love you too, Ben. I love you,” Rey whispered, breathless as she reached up to push the thick dark hair from his forehead, then to stroke his face as his own climax seized him. Rey wished he’d never stop pumping her full of him. He whispered her name the whole time, loving and sure and stronger than he has ever been.

  


* * *

  


Ben carries the blue saber of his family legacy, and wields it with entirely different restraint than he once wielded Kylo Ren’s blazing red fury. They would often spar, back before Rey grew too pregnant to do much more than stay in bed and walk at a snail’s pace. Rey has hardly seen him use the weapon in weeks, though he keeps it steadfastly clipped at his belt whenever he goes out.

Two weeks before the twins are expected, a caravan of nomads pass through the grassy clearing where their house stands. Ben meets them at the door, when two come to barter for much-needed supplies. From the kitchen, Rey hears their conversation.

“I’m afraid we can’t spare any vitamin supplements. My wife is pregnant with twins, you see, so it’s important she have them. But we have plenty of bread and grains to spare, if that helps.” 

Rey hears the two nomads answer in the affirmative, and goes about gathering up some of their extra food in a small sack. She meets Ben in the doorway, the sack in hand. 

“My wife,” Ben says, smiling politely but guardedly as he loops an arm around her before the two strangers.

Rey looks between the two members of the tribe of Naboo wanderers. They seem to have sent two of their biggest men to barter, perhaps after seeing Ben outside.

Rey hands over the sack of food. “I hope it helps.”

One of the men takes the offering and inclines his head slightly.

“Much appreciated,” he says, voice gruff. His eyes move back towards Ben, and Rey suddenly notices the distinct lack of a smile on either of the men’s faces.

“We have pregnant women too, you realize. We’re prepared to transfer you however many credits you want for some vitamin and dietary supplements.”

Ben shakes his head, his own mouth unsmiling. “I am sorry, but we can’t. Rey is too close to her delivery date. I need to stay here with her so I can’t go replenish our supplies anymore. You’ll have to find the supplements elsewhere.”

The two men shift their weight, but show no signs of leaving. Finally, one speaks in a low voice, glare fixed on Ben, “Seems a bit selfish, doesn’t it? You’ve only got one woman. We’ve got eight.”

Rey flares at Ben’s side, glowering now. “Women’s worth isn’t measured in numbers.”

The man who’d spoken twists his mouth into a sneer. He spares only a glance at Rey before turning his glare upon Ben again. Ben’s arm tightens along Rey’s shoulders, while his free hand gravitates towards his saber hilt.

The men notice.

“Oh, fancy yourself a Jedi, do you?”

“He’s not the only one,” Rey interjects, glaring at full force now. She focuses and uses the Force to rip the bag of bread and grains from the one man’s grip and bring it sailing back into her own hands. The men step back, eyes wide and mouths spluttering. Clearly they’ve never seen such a thing. Then, their shock visibly hardens into indignant fury.

“Our women won’t starve because a witch wants to keep everything for herself.”

The two lunge towards Rey, converging fast. Before Rey’s heavy body could even think about responding, a firm force abruptly pushes her a step backwards, away from the threatening nomads. Faster than her eyes could even follow the movement, Ben is suddenly stood in front of her like a physical wall, blue saber humming in his hands and blood gushing into the grass from a lesion up the arm of the man who’d been one step away from Rey. 

A stunned beat of silence follows the sudden burst of movement, until the man begins howling in pain and clutching his arm where smoke rises from the wound. Ben stands immobile, saber extended and the blade only inches from the second man’s throat. 

“Leave,” Ben commands, in a black tone Rey barely recognizes. Both men shoot him one last look of hatred before backing away, then finally turning and running. 

They pass from sight. Still, Ben doesn’t move. He stands a still sentry, as if he were made of stone. At first, Rey feels frozen behind him. She’s not frightened of him – she never could be – but she senses something amiss. Her feelings hit some invisible barrier, as she tries to reach out to him. Finally, after still failing to reach him, she speaks up.

“Ben? Are you alright?”

Rey watches his shoulders tense and lift, then slowly lower. Little by little, his body finally seems to relax. As his saber arm lowers, he lifts his head and begins looking around, as if unsure how he got there. Then he sees the still-ignited sword in his hand, and the dark red stain in the grass. His head turns towards the direction the nomads fled to. Then, he whirls to face Rey.

Her heart seizes when she sees how lost he looks. His brow furrowed together and a vague expression of horror on his face. He takes half a step towards her then stops, seeming to think better of it. He visibly swallows as he extinguishes the saber. 

“Rey. I- I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I thought he was about to hurt you and something inside me just snapped. As if I went blind…”

“It’s okay, Ben. You kept me safe. Me and the twins.”

“And I frightened you. For a moment, I lost myself all over again…”

His expression twists into anguish now. Rey instinctively moves towards him, then stops, hurt when he pulls away. 

“I haven’t lost control over myself like that since… before.”

“It was only a moment. And you did exactly the same as you would have done anyway.”

Ben is shaking his head, gaze morose upon the blood-stained ground. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

Unsure what to say to get through to him, Rey can only watch as Ben holds out his family’s weapon to her. 

At first, Rey shakes her head and refuses to take it. “It’s yours. You’ve earned it, Ben.”

“Just for now. I need to take a walk without it.”

Rey doesn’t like it, but she likes arguing with Ben even less. She takes the weapon from his hands. 

“What if other nomads from that tribe come pick a fight with you? You need to be armed.”

“I can defend myself without it.”

“Don’t stay out too long.”

Ben walks off into the clearing – the opposite way from where the nomads had run off. Rey turns and goes back into the house. She sets about the slow process of preparing dinner, which was never her forte even before she became pregnant. 

Ben returns just before sunset. Rey meets him at the door and immediately holds out his light saber to him. 

“There is nothing to punish yourself for.”

Ben stares at the weapon in her hands for a long moment, but then finally accepts it. He clips it back to its usual place at his hip. Then he leans in and kisses Rey slowly and gently on the forehead. 

“I’m sorry I left you alone.”

“I survived.”

Standing close, Ben traces a hand across her shoulder, down the slope of her arm, then along the swell of her belly. 

He speaks in a hoarse whisper, trembling and yet unyielding in purpose.

“I couldn’t bear it. If anything happened to you.”

Rey moves a hand to join his over her stomach, folding their fingers together.

“I can protect myself, you know. You don’t have to worry so much.”

“I know. It’s just…” His fingers briefly squeeze hers, fast and helpless as a muscle spasm. “You are the very breath in my lungs. You are all the light I ever see.”

Rey’s heart starts seizing and hammering noisily in her chest, the way Ben often makes it. 

She’s not good at this, like he is. She always seems devoid of words to tell him that he is everything – the very definition of her world. 

That he is not only her fated other half, composed of all she is and all she isn’t. But he is gentle and so very soft, filling her life with all the tenderness the child in her had lacked.

So she touches his face – the lips which kiss her each day and the faint lines evidencing the smile she first saw bringing sunlight into the darkest, most evil of places.

“What kind of life did you think I would live without you? When you brought me back.”

She is dodging her response, perhaps, but at the same time trying to express a devotion and need of equal magnitude.

Ben is distracted for a moment, brushing his lips against the pads of her fingertips. 

“I confess I didn’t think. I couldn’t. I saw you lying there, still and cold, and everything stopped. I only knew that if my life could become yours, that moment was what I had lived for.”

Rey shakes her head, even as tears prickle at her eyes. 

“That’s not true. You’re so much…” A thunderous frown takes over Rey’s face for a moment as she fights to make the vastness in her heart tangible. Ben senses her frustration, his expression curious and concerned. Rey huffs and settles on, “I love you. And not just because the Force marked us for each other. Not just because we’ve always been connected, and you feel like everything I ever wanted. I love you for more than that. _You_ are more than that.”

Ben just blinks at that, at first. Rey has never been one for spoken sentiments, and Ben understood that. Rey was one for instinct and passion instead. She was one for catching him off guard with heated embraces and driven, burning kisses. More than once, she’d pulled him to their bedroom, scattered his clothes like a nuisance, climbed atop and ridden him through several peaks without saying a single word. 

Sometimes, late at night, he wakes with her wrapped around him, the hold of her limbs desperate and the nuzzling against his shoulder seeking and tender. She wouldn’t speak, but Ben would kiss her temple, smooth his hands along her back, and understand her sighs. 

Now, he’s the speechless one. Instead, he lifts a hand to frame her face, watching her eyelashes flutter as he strokes a thumb beneath her bottom lip. 

“And if Leia hadn’t brought you back to me, I would never have forgiven you.”

A laugh breaks from his throat. Rey is smiling at full force now, and this is the woman he knows and loves so well. She shakes her head, then in turn presses a bit closer to Ben’s hand.

“Trying to die for me – you complete laser brained nerf herder.” 

Ben smiles helplessly. He wants to hold her forever. The only problem is that would get in the way of kissing her, of seeing her smile, of cooking for her, sparring her, laughing with her, making love with her. 

“Will you ever forgive me?”

“Hmm. Remains to be seen.” 

Rey reaches up for his shoulders. She holds tight, heaving herself and the weight of two almost fully formed infants up onto her toes so she can reach his lips. He dips down just in time to meet her kiss. Afterwards, she pets his cheek.

“You’re getting there.”

  


* * *

  


“I’m sorry I’m a bad mother.”

Ben goes very quiet after she says it, and Rey is surprised to see him look so... concerned. Is it really possible he never had the thought until now? That he never recognized how very lacking she is in maternal instinct and an ability to nurture? 

Fixing broken things, sure, she has a knack. But two beautiful newborns, powerful as her and Ben combined and imbued with all his gifts, his gentle strength and his selfless vulnerability… For such a task as that she is so woefully inadequate. 

Her body does what it is hardwired to do as the children grow within her, but once they become new, fragile beings in the world... she holds no trust that she’ll know what to do, that she’ll do the right things. Already, she lacks a mother’s care, thinking constantly of only her own discomforts rather than the fragile lives within her.

But Ben knows her. Surely he knows this about her. That she could never resist the compulsion to bear his children, but she would struggle immensely in recognizing herself as a mother in her own right. That she’s terribly ill suited for the role.

Rey and Ben are outside, sitting at the top of a lush, grassy hill offering a breathtaking view of the sunset. It’s been Rey’s favorite place ever since they arrived. 

Ben had asked the question halfway up to the hilltop. Rey had begun groaning when the strain of the climb became too much, and Ben had wordlessly swept her up to carry her the remaining steps. (Ben did not point out that Rey had insisted on walking, all but snapping at his offer to carry her the whole way when they left the house.) Almost to the top, in bravery or perhaps folly, he’d asked the daily inquiry: “How does it feel today?”

Rey had huffed, frowning. The pain in her feet and the ache that had been radiating out from her shoulders all day blinded her to the beauty of the hilltop. 

“Even _breathing_ seems to hurt,” she gripes. “Everything seems to jostle the babies and they won’t stop moving. They don’t have enough space anymore and it feels like I might tear open.”

Ben is silent for a few beats, focusing on his footing as he crests the hill. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally says. He says it often – a genuine but careful reply. They both know his apology denotes no regret for Rey’s pregnancy, but simply for his limited ability to ease her current state. “I wish I could take the pain for you.”

“You wouldn’t last a day,” she snipes. Her belly seems to be throbbing as the twins both tumble and shift, and it’s hard to think on anything else. 

“You’re probably right.”

Then they reach the top. Rey doesn’t thank him as he sets her down, sits beside her, and settles her back against him in a position to support her shoulders as much as he can. 

The evening sky begins to dim into a kaleidoscope of pink and orange, and one of Ben’s hands moves to rest atop her tummy. Finally the twins settle inside her, and Rey swallows shame as she remembers the tone she’d taken with him. 

That’s when Rey says it. The apology for what she assumes Ben knows full well. Yet another burden she made him bear, and which he does without complaint. 

She would be no good partner for him, when it comes to raising their children. What does a girl of the sand, who’d known only solitude and hunger, have to offer? How could she be expected to understand the needs of a crying infant or a tempestuous toddler?

But Ben… Ben knows these things. Ben knows when to hold his tongue and when to challenge her. Ben knows when Rey needs an extra blanket, a cup of tea, a foot rub, a silent kiss. He would be as attentive and loving a father as he is a husband, and Rey feels inexplicably glad for her part in giving him the children he would take to so well. The children who ease and coo and delight in her belly, when Ben lays his hands there and finds their glimmers in the Force. 

Rey, meanwhile… She can’t even comfort her own children when they cry within her. She can’t even see past her own selfish aches and pains long enough to treat Ben with the care he deserves. Rey bites her lip hard, the tang of blood blessedly distracting from the stinging in her eyes. 

How she hates Jakku. How she so bitterly wishes she’d known the loving touch of a mother’s hand; the reserved affection of a father. How she wishes she were even an inch of all Ben and his children deserve. 

Ben senses her tears before he sees them.

“Rey?” he murmurs, turning her slightly in his arms so he could see her face. His intake of breath comes low and appalled when he sees her flushed look of tears. 

Ben frowns, the creases on either side of his mouth all wrong. With a fingertip, he wipes away the dot of blood from where Rey’s teeth cut her bottom lip. 

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he appeals, concerned and lost. “Why you would think something like that.”

More tears course down her face, when Rey takes in the gentle ache in Ben’s eyes and thinks that she put it there. 

“I don’t belong here,” she whispers. 

Rey barely understands her own urges. She wants to shove Ben away, yell and scream until he never looks at her with such undeserved gentleness ever again. And she wants to cling to him, beg him to never release her so long as she lives. 

She wants to leave. After the babies are born she wants them to know something better in a mother. And then she thinks of them in the world, physical and soft, and she wants to pledge every meager moment and effort of her life to their protection and happiness. 

Ben takes on a look that seems downright frightened. He shifts beside her, freeing his hands to lift them both to frame her face. With his thumbs, he tries to smooth away her tears. 

“What are you on about? You want to be somewhere other than with me and our babies?”

Rey’s breathing trembles and comes up short. 

“You just… you should have so much more. The babies should have so much more.”

“More than what? I don’t understand.”

This is the first time Ben has ever struggled to understand what’s playing out in her mind. Maybe that should prove to her that she’s not thinking in straight lines, but Rey can’t yet get there. 

“More than… me.”

Rey goes quiet then, tears frozen and breathing silent. It’s finally outside of her now, the ugly truth she’s been struggling to cope with ever since her belly started to show. She knew she had to release it before the twins came; before it was too late for Ben to recognize…

“ _Rey._ ”

Ben’s expression is hard to read, firm and hardened over as it is. Rey thinks he looks disapproving, something near disappointed, and even as Rey’s heart breaks she thinks it’s only right. 

“I want you to listen to me very closely, and promise me you won’t speak. Alright?”

Ben’s voice is empty of its usual affection; it’s forceful and impossible to ignore. She nods. Only the hand still cradling her face balances the gravity of his tone.

“No one in the whole galaxy would be a better mother than you. Nobody knows better how important a mother is – how much is lost in her absence. I know it can seem frightening, or downright impossible. I know I’m scared every single day of whether or not I’ll be enough for our twins. I know that fear can be… paralyzing.”

Ben pauses, his lips quaking as he takes a deep breath. For a moment, Rey forgets all of her own distress, plunged straight back into memories of watching his mouth tremble in just the same way the day he offered her the words “You’re not alone” and changed her life forever. 

His wide hand moves against her face, fingers stroking along her hair and her cheek, down, up, and back down again.

“But that doesn’t mean we aren’t fit. That doesn’t mean we’re deficient. I think we need fear like that – I think it shows just how much we care. How hard we’re going to work to be what our little ones need.”

A few straggling tears escape from Rey’s eyes. 

“I don’t know what they need, Ben. All I ever had for parents were dreams.”

Ben strokes her face again, sitting up and centering himself, his expression focused on her completely. 

“And all I had were resentments. But Rey, you and I aren’t bound by the past. Our children will be extraordinary, and they’ll be borne of us. Our hardships, our powers, our love. After everything we’ve been through, even after all the mistakes I’ve made and the suffering I’ve caused… we created two beautiful bursts of life. And we will make a future for them full of all the things we lacked.”

Rey sniffles, looking into Ben’s eyes even as her hands gravitate down to her belly. 

“They’re so warm, Ben. So good.”

One side of Ben’s mouth rises in a smile. His eyes twinkle a little.

“They are. Just like you.”

That gives Rey pause. Makes her stop and look down at the swell of her belly. Since the day she first felt the stirring of new life in her, she’d thought of herself as a mere conduit. A sort of intruder, even, into the budding lives of these two small wonders. 

She’d believed their goodness came from Ben – from the care he tended her with and the gentleness with which he’d sown them within her. She’d taken each ache and pain as proof of her unworthiness, but perhaps it had been something more…

Ben’s lips brush across her forehead. They repeat in a murmur, “Just like you.”

Rey has suffered much to reach this here and now. To reach this peaceful hilltop. Ben has suffered still more. He emerged from his darkness, had defeated the violence of his inner conflict. There were still moments when Rey feared she would never escape her own – would never fully leave behind the memories of hunger, of emptiness, of savage desperation. 

This time, Ben senses and understands the path of her thoughts. 

“Rey, just yesterday I succumbed to a moment of the dark side. Neither of us will ever be fully rid of it, because it’s part of what made us who we are. And Jakku… as difficult and terrible as it was, as monstrously unjust it is that you lived a childhood there alone… It’s what makes you love so fiercely.”

Ben’s forehead comes to rest against hers, his words ghosting across Rey’s lips. 

“Who else could have seen something good in me? Who else would have offered me their hand like you did, even when I was lost to the dark?”

Rey never thought of her own actions as anything but inevitable. From the moment she’d looked at Ben across firelight and seen him with entirely new eyes, all trace of darkness had dissipated. Of course she’d extended her hand to a boy made for the light, in whose eyes she saw all the same battles she fought every day within her own soul.

She reaches up to touch his hair.

“It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

Ben smiles, and Rey can almost feel the warmth of it.

“You see? That’s why you’re going to be such a wonderful mother.”

Rey takes a deep breath, letting Ben’s words and a change in the winds begin to trickle into her heart. It’s difficult. So difficult to imagine the right choices in a sea of wrong. 

But the twins are insistent. They are impossible to deny and so very demanding. They seem to already understand the world so much better than Rey ever has. Perhaps _that_ is enough. To listen to her children and accept their voices for what and who they are. 

Her children. Her own children. Part of her and borne of her and made of her. 

It is a terrifying thought. A kind of power she never thought herself capable of. But with Ben – so sure and strong at her side – how could she ever really fail?

The sun has nearly gone by now – its face sunk beneath the hills and its final radiance smoldering along the horizon. In only a few handful of days, their twins will be here, basking in the same sunsets and taking in the same sights with their new, innocent eyes. 

There is so much beauty to show them in the world. So much she wants her babies to learn and take joy in. 

Rey thinks for the first time – perhaps _this_ is what it means to love a child. 

“What will we name them?”

Ben has just finished rearranging Rey, leaning her back against his chest so he can wrap one arm around her shoulders and rest the other over her belly. When he hears the question, he smiles into Rey’s hair and rubs circles over her stomach. 

“Something new. Something free and unburdened.”

As if sensing they’re being talked about, the boy twists and kicks out. Ben breathes in wonder when he feels the tiny foot flail. 

“He’s entirely yours, you know,” Rey says, smiling immediately even as the boy’s movements reverberate with a bit of pain. “Way too big and always looking for you.”

Ben rubs his hand back and forth, pressing his smile against Rey’s temple. “I’m right here, little one.” 

They both feel the little boy sneeze, then release what feels like a laugh into the Force. Then his sister wakes up, and feels around experimentally as she stretches. 

“She’s looking for you,” Ben breathes, his eyes closed as he isolates the presence of each of their children. 

Rey splays a hand across her belly. She closes her eyes and draws from Ben’s strength, until she can find her daughter’s mind. 

The little girl makes a sound that’s undeniably delight, and Rey feels a physical ache to hold them both in her arms. 

“You’ll be with us soon, sweetheart,” Rey murmurs, her smile wide and automatic. “Both of you will.”

Ben’s own smile brushes against Rey’s skin, his words aimed down towards the twins. 

“We may not be entirely ready, but we’ll do our best. The best we can.”

Rey shifts, her attention sliding up to Ben as she lifts her hands to his face. She remembers the first time she kissed him – full of the wonder of new life and awed speechless by all he had given her. 

She presses her lips to his and it feels almost the same – every bit as miraculous and impassioned, full of wonder and teeming with the memories of each day shared together. 

When she pulls back to look at him now; when she lifts a finger to caress the creases of his smile - the evidence that just her kiss can still elicit such joy in him; she shines with wonder before the coming arrival of new life and awe for all they’ve given each other.

Her voice is sure when she says, “And that will be enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I just really needed Ben being the understanding, gentle, tall husband and future father we all knew he would be. That, and I had a need to engage with Rey's search for place and her understanding of her own desires and sentiments to some degree beyond the completely superficial :'). Please let me know what you thought!
> 
> I do have a craving and vague plan to do a fic rewriting all of TROS... Most of the story is in my head already, but I have a feeling it will be a bit emotionally draining to start on. I'm hoping I'll feel up to diving into it soon, though. (After finishing the epilogue of [Love It If We Made It!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19841884/chapters/48544187))
> 
> Thanks for reading! Here I am on [tumblr :)](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/)


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